5/12/14 4:48 PM

The new All-In-One Biopellets from Reef Interests just might be a game-changer in the aquarium market. Made from the purest materials, All-In-One Biopellets can remove five times more nitrate and ten to twenty times more phosphate than all other biopellets currently on the market. With those credentials, this product will potentially change the way aquarists universally deal with nitrate and phosphate export in marine aquariums.

This past Friday, I had the pleasure of speaking directly with Dennis van Houten in The Netherlands regarding this new product. During the hour-long phone conference, Dennis shared some personal experiences with me and explained in a nut shell how and why this patent-pending product works so successfully. I learned that the product went through a four year period of research and development combined with about a year and a half of product testing before being released to the market. Dennis related to me that he has a 700 liter (185 gallon) home aquarium with a very heavy bio-load (about 50 fish). As you might imagine, phosphate and nitrate could easily have been off the charts without frequent and large water changes or other expensive methods of controlling Po4 and No3 levels. Dennis also shared with me that he has been using the new pellets for about 10 months now and has continually experienced zero detectable nitrate and phosphate levels. Previous nuisance algae issues have ceased and the aquarium water is crystal clear as a result of using ...

Tags:

5/9/14 5:02 PM

BioTek Marine Premium Dry Reef Rock is now available from Aquarium Specialty and we are pleased to be able to offer this premium dry rock mined from land in the sate of Florida. BioTek Marine Dry Reef Rock is a dry rock that is mined from land and thus it has no impact to the reef environment and marine systems. All of the rock is cleansed after it's mined so that dirt and other organics are removed from the rock crevaces and rock surfaces.

BioTek Marine Dry Reef Rock is delivered reef-ready and pest/organism free. The advantages of using a natural dry dry over live rock is that it won't leach out potentially hamful substances into the aquarium water column and it provides a strong and supportative reef structure for your aquarium inhabitants. BioTek Marine Premium Dry Rock can be used in marine fish only systems, reef aquariums and fresh water setups.

This product is presently in stock with same day shipping from Columbia, SC. All orders received prior 3:30 PM EST will ship out the same business day. BioTek Marine Rock is offered in 10lb boxes at a price of $22.49 and 25lb boxes sell for $56.49 per box. Both the 10lb and 25lb boxes ship at a flat rate of $10.00 per box within the continental USA. To order or learn more please visit here.

Tags:

5/8/14 10:40 AM

Is it time for an Upgrade?

Aqua Illumination now offers a Hydra FiftyTwo upgrade for their Sol and Vega legacy fixtures. As one of the most powerful LED lights available today, the Hydra FiftyTwo delivers 135 watts of high-end LED lighting from 7 different LED colored diodes. The Hydra FiftyTwo LED fixtures currently retail for $599, however current owners of the AI Sol or AI Vega LED fixtures may upgrade to AI’s best fixture for half the price.

The Aqua Illumination Hydra FiftyTwo upgrade kit is priced at $299 per fixture provided that you have the heat sink and fan from your previous fixture. The upgrade is easily and quickly accomplished with a screw driver or allen wrench. Once installed, the next step is to have your wireless controller or director recognize your new fixture.

It is fortuitous for Aqua Illumination purchaser's that this company has designed an upgradeable fixture to keep up with the ever changing LED technology. For information or to order this upgrade, you will need to contact Aqua Illumination directly. As of this date, Aqua Illumination is not offering the upgrade kits to its distributor to provide to their previous Sol and Vega customers. To order new Aqua Illumination products like the Hydra and Hydra FiftyTwo click here.

Tags:

5/6/14 12:56 PM

The new BioTek Marine frag racks are available from Aquarium Specialty. They will also be debuting at other retail locations in the near future. The new rack features a 23 3/4" x 23 3/4" surface for mounting your favorite frags. The rack is black in color and is comprised of polished furniture grade black PVC pipe and PVC fittings to support your corals. The cross members, fittings, egg crate and zip strap are all packaged in the kit. Also included are two 21 1/2" PVC furniture grade sticks that can easily be cut to the desired length for the legs of the rack. The BioTek Marine Frag Rack assembles in a matter of minutes and is immediately ready for use upon assembly. No gluing is required and the rack may easily be disassembled as needed. For information and pricing please click here.

Tags:

4/11/14 9:11 AM

Coral Vue's Reef Octopus line of protein skimmers is launching a new series of DC controllable skimmers but this time they are being featured with their own in-house brand of DC controllable pumps. This should be good news for Reef octopus because the Diablo pumps had to many reliability issues as did the Speedwave and Waveline Gen1 pumps that were produced in the same factory. The new series of skimmers will be called Regal Reef Skimmers and I'm betting Chris at Coral Vue remembered a company I started up a long time ago called Regal Reef to come up with the idea. Just kidding Chris but maybe you loved the name so much you pulled this out of your subconscious.

The Regal Internal sump housed Skimmers feature an internal pump design like their SSS models (Super Space Saver) to save room for sump reactors and other aquarium devices that take up space in aquarium sumps. Like other DC controlled skimmers currently on the market (RLSS and Bubble King), the DC pump controller allows for fine tuning of the pump’s speed and energy consumption, which affects air and water draw (air-to-water ratio) and cost of operation. Pricing, Specs and pictures have been released to Aquarium Specialty and the pricing can be located here for the Regal internal models and here for the Regal external models.

Made from cast acrylic with red accents, the Regal Skimmers will look nice alongside some of the competing brands like Vertex or Royal Exclusiv if you are one to mix and match different brand...

Tags:

3/25/14 4:57 PM

As a special thank you to our customers, Aquarium Specialty has developed a easy to use program designed to give you more ways to save on the items you need!

The Specialty Points Program is free to all customers with an account and earning points is quick and easy!

Newsletter:

Sign up for our newsletter and get a point bonus in your account (Only available once for new subscribers). The good news is we typically only send out 1-2 newsletters per month so don't be scared. We won't bomb your inbox with emails everyday like some companies do.

Purchases:

Earn one point for every dollar spent. If you spend $100.00, you get 100 points in your account. It's as simple as that and then you can use your points towards future purchases from Aquarium Specialty. It's a no-brainer.

Referrals, Tell your friends:

Under the "My Account" tab, you have the option to send a referal link to a friend with a specific code. When your friend(s) creates an account and sucessfully places an order, you get a special thank you in the form of points in your account.

Specials:

Each month we'll have items that will have extra specialty points attached to them. Purchase any number of these items and receive the bonus specialty points.

Bonus specialty points are awarded for the product as well as the points for the purchase price of the item. Be sure to sign up for the newsletter to be in the loop on these special deals. Yep, another reason to sign up.

Tags:

3/25/14 3:24 PM

Those of you that own or are familiar with the Ecotech Marine Radion LED fixtures are most likely aware of or own the Ecotech Reef Link wireless controller. Until recently the Reef Link was only able to control the Radion LED fixtures but now it also has Vortech control. The pumps themselves have had wireless functionality for many years and Aquarium Specialty was the company that had the honor of being the sole distributor of the 1st several hundred wireless upgrades to be sold in the US market several years ago.

The Vortech wireless pumps were limited to pump-to-pump communication so as to create synchronized and anti-sync wave patterns. Now with the addition of the Reef Link Vortech firmware update aquarists hobbyists can sync their pumps to their Radion LED lighting schedule and control everything wirelessly from a smart phone, computer, or tablet.

EcoTech Marine’s latest updates to their EcoSmart Live software now includes settings for the VorTechs, allowing hobbyists to control their pumps via the internet and mobile devices. The software has all of the native wave modes of the EcoSmart controllers, but adds to that with greater precision of control, as well as a few other nice touches that will probably result in you never actually touching the physical control hardware ever again.

In the video above, EcoTech Marine quickly steps us through the updates. It’s not as in-depth as we’d like but we expect Ecotech to role out more in-depth videos in the near future. For more...

Tags:

3/18/14 3:08 PM

Apogee has released a slick new fiberglass sensor wand for the aquarium market. The wand is a 3 piece design that can be used for different sized aquariums. It's reef safe and made from fiberglass. The overall length is 41" (104cm) so it will be able to reach the bottom of most reef aquariums with ease. By simply detaching the sensor mount you can shorten the wand length to better suit your specific aquarium depth. In other words, you can one, two or all three sections to suit your needs.

Aquarium Specialty is a master distributor for the Apogee Instruments MQ-200 PAR meters and we expect to have the new 3 piece sensor wands in stock very soon. Pre-orders and more information are available now by clicking this link.

Tags:

3/14/14 9:14 AM

Royal Exclusiv (Germany)

The Royal Exclusiv ® company is headquartered in the north of Cologne and specializes in the production of pumps, protein skimmers and high-quality sumps and other aquarium related products. The company began producing aquarium products in 1986 by owner and master craftsman, Klaus Jansen. Klaus's 28+ years of professional experience in wood, metal and plastics processing and manufacturing has led Royal Exclusiv to be the world leader in innovating better and better protein skimmer designs and more recently, state of the art aquarium sumps and water pumps.

Royal Exclusiv's primary focus is producing and optimizing top tier best in class pumps, protein skimmers and other aquarium products.

Back in September the Royal Exclusiv team invited me to lunch while we were at MACNA 2013 and this is when I learned that they were making plans to open up Royal Exclusiv USA in Ft. Myers Florida sometime after the 1st of the year. The 4000 sq. ft. facility in Ft. Myers is already in place and they are currently getting all the logistics in place to open May 1st of 2014 and they expect to be fully operational by the end of 2014.

Aquarium Specialty has been carrying Royal Exclusiv Bubble King skimmers and Red Dragon pumps longer than any other dealer in the US and we have always supported the line to the best of our ability but not without it's inherent challenges. The challenge has always been getting is skimmers, pumps and parts quickly enough to satisfy the high en...

Tags:

3/3/14 10:36 AM

A few days ago Neptune Systems showed off a new little product they are selling called the MPR or Magnetic Probe Rack as they are calling it. Here's what Neptune Systems has to say about their new accessory.

Just announced today at ReefStock 2014 - The little new product we promised. It may be little, but it has been in demand for a long time. The MPR - Magnetic Probe Rack was designed specifically for the Apex and will hold our larger diameter temperature probe, pH probe, ORP probe, and salinity probe. It's made from acrylic and with strong neodymium magnets it will hold on tight even on sumps that are 1/2" thick! Retail price on the MPR is $39.95 and it will be available in small quantities this month through Neptune Systems resellers with wide availability next month.

Aquarium Specialty is placing a stock order today for 20 pieces and the expected delivery date is the week of March 31st. Pre-orders can be made here.